Dick Staub just finished reading Christian Smith’s project Soul Searching: The Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, and fortunately for us he’s taken some notes. Over at his blog, he’s posted quite a few noteworthy quotes and observations from the book. Just a few that stood out:

“Most religious teenagers either do not really comprehend what their own religious traditions say they are supposed to believe, or they do understand it and simply do not care to believe it. Either way, it is apparent that most religiously affiliated US teens are not particularly invested in espousing and upholding the beliefs of their faith traditions or that their communities of faith are failing in attempts to educate their youth, or both.”

And another one on a typical teenager’s profession of faith:

“Viewed in terms of the absolute historical centrality of the Protestant conviction about salvation by God’s grace alone, through faith alone and not by any human good works, many belief professions by Protestant teens, including numerous conservative Protestant teens, in effect discard that essential Protestant gospel.”

Not terribly uplifting information. We tend to talk a lot about reaching out to unchurched young people, but as I’m sure any church youth director will tell you, there’s an awful lot of training and education that needs to happen within the church. There’s plenty more over at Dick’s blog. Sounds like a useful study, especially if you’re involved in youth ministry.